Divorcing Jack (27 page)

'Ah, Mrs Brinn. Nice to see you again.'

Agnes put her head round the door and stared at me. 'Are you coming in?'

It had only been a few days since we had met, yet the additive-free face I had so admired had become rather haggard and her hair lay dank on her head. I was no oil painting myself, of course.

She wavered uncertainly in the doorway then slowly stepped forward. She closed the door behind her and leant against it. She kept staring. It was unsettling.

‘Is he coming then?' I asked.

'He'll be along when he finishes his meeting.'

I nodded. My seat by the window gave me a good view of the floodlit garden. I turned away from her to watch the progress of the guards as they patrolled the perimeter wall, their black uniforms brightened only by the pinprick glow of cigarettes.

'Why are you here?' She asked, her voice drink-dulled. 'To see the man.'

'What about?'

I kept my eyes on the garden. 'That's between me and the man.'

She clicked a heel sharply against the door. I looked up at her. Her top lip was trembling. I'd never seen a top lip tremble before.

‘Why won't anyone tell me anything?' She was on the verge of tears. I started to rise from my seat but she tensed up against the door and I lowered myself back down. 'What's going on?'

I opened my palms to her. It was better than shrugging. 'Too much,' I volunteered.

'Why won't anyone tell me anything?' She repeated, running her hands through her hair, which can't have been pleasant. 'Why are you here? He didn't tell me you were coming, you of all people. I mean, after what you did . . . he brings you here?'

'Agnes, I didn't do anything.'

'He's been in foul form for days and he won't tell me a thing, and he used to tell me everything. Everything.' The tears started to roll. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. 'It's like I don't know him at all. And he's got everything going for him.'

Then all of her was trembling. I stood up and walked across to her and went to put my arms round her but she pushed me away. 'It all started when you came here. Everything was going so fine till you came. It's like there's a curse on you. I don't know why he doesn't get the police and have done with you.'

I crossed to the window again. There wasn't much I could say. Then she was beside me, looking out over the grounds, at a rabbit valiantly defying the floodlights. 'It's not going to work, is it?' She asked. 'After all we've achieved, it's all going to fall apart at the end, isn't it?'

‘I don't know. It's not up to me. I'm only a messenger.'

'The devil's advocate,' she said.

'That's a drink made with eggs, isn't it? No wonder he's so evil, it tastes like shite.'

She gave a sad little chuckle and said wearily, 'In the middle of all this, you're writing.' It wasn't writing. It was wit. It was an entirely different thing. I hadn't thought of writing for an eternity. 'What will you write about it then, when it's over?' She asked.

I shook my head. 'I never write something until I know how it ends.'

The door opened. We both looked round. Brinn. The same pale face, but his eyes hooded now, menacing. 'What are you doing in here, Agnes?'

She put her hand mockingly to her chest. 'Me? Oh, you can see me, can you? What a surprise.'

'Agnes

'Oh stop it, wouldja?'

She took off across the room. He moved to one side of the doorway and she stormed past without looking at him. Brinn gave her back a lingering gaze, then closed the door and turned to face me.

'Women,' I said, to break the ice.

'Men,' he said, 'and what they do.'

'Yeah,' I said.

We sat opposite each other. The decaffeinated coffee table was between us, as before. A copy of the
Belfast Telegraph
sat upon it, with a colour photograph of the masses attending Brinn's peace rally staring up at me.

‘Is that there for a reason?' I asked.

'It may be. I didn't put it there. Maybe Alfie was being cryptic'

'Yeah.'

'Maybe he was just reading it in here. Maybe you're reading too much into it.'

'As the great communicator I thought you might be trying to tell me something. Something about peace and love.

No?'

'From me? If you know what I think you know, you won't be expecting that, will you?'

Slipping back into old habits, I shrugged.

'So let's talk,' he said, 'about the pleasures of home taping. They say it's killing music, but I wonder if they thought about it killing democracy?' His smile barely curled above his upper teeth and tugged only lightly at his cheeks. 'Shoot,' he said.

'Just the facts, then.' I spread my ten fingers before him and began counting them off. I had no plans to get as far as ten. 'As you know, I've been sent here by Cow Pat Coogan. He has possession of a tape in which you confess to the bombing of the Paradise restaurant in 1974 in which eight people died. He would like to sell it back to you-for

£250,000, which, he says, isn't very much. Otherwise he will make it public'

Brinn shook his head slowly, but it wasn't a negative response as such, more an instinctive reaction. 'And of course there's only the one copy,' he said. He stared at me for several seconds. '£250,000 isn't very much, is it? He wouldn't dream of bleeding me dry from now till kingdom come, would he, or controlling the country through blackmail?'

'He gave me his word,' I said. 'Of course, he could have been lying. I imagine he isn't called Cow Pat for nothing.'

‘I imagine not.' Brinn stood up and walked to the window. He shook his head again as he stared out over the floodlit gardens. 'Tell me, Starkey, what's your role in all this? I've managed to keep out of the papers that I know you at all; I hoped that might be the worst of my problems. What was it, you decided the sword was mightier than the pen, or you just wanted to get rich quick? And why Cow Pat Coogan of all people?'

His voice was wispy, carried on the slightly musty air of the paperback-lined room like a chicken feather rising on a thin beam of sunlight in a slaughterhouse. It wasn't easy to feel sorry for him. I felt sorrier for myself.

'It's quite simple really,' I said. I'd get to the tenth finger yet. 'I was having an affair with Margaret McGarry. She gave me a tape. Somebody killed her. I got blamed. The tape was taken off me. Now they'll kill my wife if you don't deal. See? Simple. Your turn. The tape. It is authentic, isn't it?'

Brinn turned from the window, leant against it. 'I haven't heard it, of course. But I have no reason to doubt its existence.' He tilted his head up towards the ceiling, puffed out his cheeks and blew air. 'These things do have a habit of coming back to haunt you, don't they?'

'I'll take your word for it.'

'I mean, things you do when you're drunk.'

'You were drunk when you bombed the . . .'

'No, no,' he snapped, 'when McGarry . .. betrayed me. Do you ever wake up after you've been drinking and you just go, oh no, when you remember what you've done?'

'Always.'

'That's what it was like. I'd been to a Party party, if you know what I mean. The campaign was just under way. I was with friends, so I was able to let my hair down a bit, first time for a long time. I just got drunk and a bit depressed over this and that. Maybe it was the bomb. It never really goes away, you understand? McGarry took me home. We had a long conversation. He was the first person I ever told about the bomb. Not even my wife.'

‘I gathered that.'

'The more I think about it now the more I realize he steered the conversation towards violence, towards the bomb. Somehow he got to hear about it and took advantage of me when I was drunk to tape what amounts to a confession. The bastard. To think of all the help I'd .. .'

'Things like that always come out.'

He shook his head. 'You'd be surprised. The number of things I could tell you about... people. You'd be appalled. But I'm not like that . . . forgive and forget.'

'Difficult for eight families to forget...'

'Jesus!' Brinn snapped. 'Don't you think I know? How do you think I got into politics?' He returned to his seat, crossed his legs, rubbed his fingers over a lightly stubbled chin. His eyes glazed in memory. 'I was only a youngster when it all happened. Easily led. I thought I was fighting for a just cause. They told me I was bombing a police dinner. I was bombing a police dinner, but the restaurant had double booked it and the police agreed to a change of venue at the last minute and I got to bomb the Cavalier King

Charles Spaniel Club. You, and I mean you, might describe it as barking up the wrong tree.'

'That's a sad comment on me.'

'Yeah. It's all sad. You experience death like that, it changes you. It changed me. I worked hard. I got all this. I nearly got to be prime minister, didn't I?'

'Nearly,' I agreed.

'But not now,' he said.

I shrugged. 'Things might work out okay.'

'Don't be stupid, Starkey. This is all the Unionists have been waiting for. If this gets out, voters would rather slip tongues with lepers than vote for me.'

‘I always felt like that.'

'Starkey,' he said bluntly, his gaze as close to withering as be damned, 'what the fuck gives you the right to sit there and be so bloody patronizing?'

I sat back. 'My wife being held hostage because of a bomb you planted.'

He snorted. 'We're both in the shit.'

'Yeah.'

'And you're the only one with any hope of coming out of this smelling of roses.'

‘I don't mind if I come out smelling of shit, Brinn, as long as I come out, and at the moment that's entirely up to you. You have an answer for Coogan?'

He shook his head.

'He wants to hear soon. So does my wife.'

‘I know this sounds harsh, Starkey, but I can't put your wife before the country.'

'It doesn't sound harsh, it sounds stupid. Think of her as the country. Save her, maybe you save the country.'

'Now who's being cryptic?'

'Fuck cryptic, Brinn. Make your mind up.'

'Okay. Okay.' He moved thin fingers up to his brow and rubbed at it vigorously for several long moments. He shook his head again. He folded his arms. He looked at the door. At his books. Out over the lawns again. Down at the photo of the peace rally. At me. At my denims. At my hair. In my eyes. Finally he stood up. The moment of truth. 'Wait here,' he said quietly. 'I need to ask my wife.'

He stopped as he opened the door. 'If I pay, do you think that'll be the end of it?' He asked. His hands were trembling.

‘I don't know.'

He nodded slightly and left.

I phoned Coogan. 'He wants to sleep on it.'

Coogan laughed. 'Just who the fuck does he think he is? Sleep on it!'

'He has a lot to think about.'

'Well, sleeping won't fucking help that.'

'It's a turn of phrase, Coogan. I don't think he'll be doing much sleeping. Give him a break for God's sake.'

Alfie Stewart showed me to a bedroom. He didn't say much. I didn't say much. The room was as spartan as rarely used guest bedrooms are, an artificial tidiness failed by a thin layer of dust. Alfie didn't wish me a good night. I lay on the bed and watched the dawn come up over the marina, grey to blue. Several times I heard raised voices, too distant to distinguish them properly other than as male and female, but it wasn't difficult to guess who they belonged to. I felt dirty and it wasn't just from lack of a shower.

Patricia and Lee were hostages to a gangster and their fate lay in the hands of a bomber, all because of an adulterer. Coogan would dispatch them with the same callousness with which Parker had entered the next world. Brinn had to deal.

Alfie had told me to stay in my room. He didn't want me wandering about Red Hall in case anyone not in the know came across me. As a precaution he locked the door.

But it was more to keep strangers out than me in. Not that I could have picked the lock, but the window was open and it wasn't much of a jump to the ground below. And I still had one good leg to land on.

It was still early when Alfie entered the room. 'Knock, knock,' he said, closing the door behind him. He had a tray in his hands. 'Breakfast is served,' he announced with a flourish and set it down on the bedside table. He looked like he'd been up all night. 'And don't worry, I didn't spit in it.'

‘I wish I could believe you, Alfie.'

'Of course you can, Starkey, I'm in politics.'

I pulled myself up from the bed. 'Well?' I asked. 'Any word. Do you bring me tidings of great joy?'

'No, I bring you scrambled eggs and Brinn'll be down in a minute.'

He hovered by the bed as I poked at the food.

'You make this yourself?'

'Sure.'

I left it. 'I've not much appetite. Sorry.'

'No skin off my nose, Starkey.' I shrugged.

'He's told you about the tape?'

'He has.'

'And you're sticking with him?'

Alfie nodded. 'Through thick and thin.'

'You must have wavered.'

'Maybe. But I've made my decision. I don't change my colours that quickly, Starkey.'

'Brinn did, bomber to politician.'

'Don't try to provoke me.'

'I'm not. I'm just saying. You must have thought about it.'

'I'm here, aren't I? Doesn't that tell you everything?' He lifted the tray and left the room. It told me everything. Everything about a man shown a glimpse of power reluctant to let it go. Brinn left me for another half-hour. Cars began to arrive outside: party workers for the most part, but also TV crews for their final pre-election interviews. The BBC and Ulster Television were there, ABC and NBC from the States, French and Italian. I recognized a couple of newspaper reporters, hanging around in the car park looking victimized. I thought briefly about opening the bedroom window fully and shouting my story to the world. But only briefly.

When Brinn appeared he looked even worse than Alfie. His eyes were puffy, like he'd been in a fight, his customary pallor had deepened; it would have frightened a mortician. A bone in his bent nose shone white against the bridge, as if illuminated from within. He was wearing a pale-grey suit that didn't do him any favours.